Stories
by BeebleZeeble
Summary: Alanna is careful with what stories she tells her children.


Alanna had precious few good memories of the father she was born to.

It wasn't that she hated him; he was too much of a non-entity in her life for her to rustle up anything near as strong an emotion as hatred. She knew that Thom had hated Lord Alan, that Thom viewed his father's neglect of them with deep resentment. However, as far as Alanna was concerned, once she left Trebond all she could really summon up for the man was indifference.

So when her children asked her to tell them stories about the grandfather they had never met, she had found lying to them surprisingly easy. Well, it wasn't really lying, she told herself, so much as it was omitting.

She told her children how Lord Alan had taught her to read, how her father had set her on his lap and written out each letter of the alphabet on a slate. Lord Alan had drilled her endlessly about the sound the letters made, until she knew them by heart. At first Alanna had learned her alphabet faster than Thom had, earning her the rare prize of faint praise from her father. Thom quickly surpassed her in reading speed, but by that time Lord Alan was no longer personally tutoring them, and thus failed to note his son's achievements.

Alanna did not tell her children that being held so closely by her father had made her stomach hurt, she had been so afraid of disappointing him. She did not mention that Lord Alan was both an impatient and inattentive teacher, clearly eager for her to hurry up and understand already so he could get back to the work he actually wanted to be doing.

Alanna told her children about the time that she and Thom had gotten into a fight during the Midwinter feast; how she got so angry that she had shoved Thom into the beautiful cake the cook had baked specially for the occasion, ruining it for everyone. Her children loved that story, picturing their also-unknown uncle covered in icing, and the whole household in an uproar. They shrieked with laughter as she described Coram chasing her all through the hall, sprinting after her as she leapt over benches and dashed under tables, until he finally caught her by the collar.

Alanna did not tell the part of the story where, instead of Coram's familiar discipline, Lord Alan took it upon himself to ensure she was punished. She remembered his eyes as he hit her, how terrifyingly blank they were. Coram may have gotten angry with her from time to time, but she knew him too well to be frightened by him. Lord Alan was different. Alanna had realized in that moment that she had no idea what Lord Alan was capable of. As she looked up at him that night, she became seized with the fear that he would never stop hitting her, his eyes cool and dispassionate as he got rid of her once and for all. In the end he did stop, long before the point Alanna feared, but well after Coram would have.

She told her children the story of Lady Catherine, how she and Thom had scared off their evil potential step-mother with magic. Her eldest always liked that one best. Alanna could see that as he listened, her Thom was imagining using his Gift for mischief too. She would always tickle him then, making him giggle and wriggle until he promised he would never use his magic that way. It filled Alanna's heart with something both pleasing and painful to see her son idolize his namesake.

Alanna never mentioned that a large part of why she hated Lady Catherine was due to a delicately carved wooden doll the woman had gifted her. "Your father said you would love this," Lady Catherine had said, with a smile that never quite reached her eyes. Thom had been given an equally confusing gift: a toy lance and accompanying stick horse. Later that night as she tried to fall asleep Alanna couldn't stop thinking about the doll. She heard Lady Catherine in her head, over and over again, "Your father said you would love this." Alanna tried to remember the last time she had shown even the slightest interest in dolls, but couldn't summon a single memory. She slowly became aware that her father had absolutely no idea who she was at all, and the realization had filled Alanna with a sadness she could not find the end of. The following morning, Alanna and Thom had decided Lady Catherine had to go, although neither of them discussed why.

Really, they weren't big things that Alanna omitted. Just things that didn't make good stories. Things that would have confused the children too much, or possibly even make them feel bad. Just because she birthed them, didn't make them entitled to her entire life, Alanna reasoned. She had a right to hold back the things she felt were necessary to hold back. She had a right to shape her own stories.

Later on, Alanna wondered if perhaps she ought to have told her children more of the truth. When they asked her why she had so many more stories about Coram than Lord Alan, or why, outside of a few books, she didn't have any keepsakes from her father, she couldn't quite find a satisfactory answer. Alanna wondered if she should have told them more when she saw them struggle to understand that not all of their friends had families like theirs. In particular, when Aly would claim that Alanna never spent enough time with her children to know know them at all, it cut Alanna so deeply she wasn't sure how she would heal. She wanted to deny Aly this feeling, to hiss at her, "You have never known true neglect, you have no right to claim that pain." It was too much to bear, to know that her daughter sometimes felt the same things Alanna had. She wondered if she ought to have told Aly more, but now it felt almost too late.

Instead Alanna settled for letting Aly shape her own stories.


End file.
